The Dark Tower, Book 5 - Wolves of the Calla
by Stephen King Donald M. Grant/Scribner; HCVR: ISBN 1880418568 PubDate: 11/04/03
Review by John Berlyne736 pgs. List price $35Buy this book and support SFRevu at
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I’ll begin this review by stating that
King’s magnum opus is
undoubtedly required reading for any self-respecting genre reader. It is
a vast work, thirty odd years in the writing, panoramic in scope, depth
and idea, filled with myriad wonders and dangers and ultimately a hugely
rewarding (if at times uneven) experience for any reader who puts in the
necessary time it takes to plough through it. To date there have been
five volumes released, and the King publicity machine states that the
author has completed the remaining two volumes which will published next
year. Given the nature of this work, this review can be aimed only at those readers
familiar with the series – if you’re thinking of beginning this journey
with The Wolves of the Calla,
DON’T! Start – as I did to prepare for this review – by picking up The Gunslinger and working
your way through. If you don’t, frankly, you won’t have the slightest
clue about what’s going on!

Are they gone? Good. Now that the
uninitiated have left the room, we can go on.

So, you’ve followed the journey of Roland
and his companions since it began, and of course, you’ll be ravenous for
this new volume. Good news! You won’t be disappointed. The Wolves of the Calla is
the most focused episode yet, moving this epic story both forward and
sideways and it shows, in no uncertain terms, that King is still right
on top of his game.

Still trudging along the path of the beam
toward the tower, Roland and co step out of the strangeness that ended
Wizards and Glass and find
themselves giving aid and succor to the folken of Calla Bryn
Sturgis. This remote farming community exhibits an odd characteristic –
their children are mostly born as twins. What the locals term
“singletons” are rare indeed. There is a far darker problem though – the
Wolves are coming! Every twenty years or so, the Calla is raided by a
marauding band of masked and seemingly indestructible horrors. They
steal away their children, always one half of a twin set and herd them
back to Thunderclap from whence they came. Nobody knows what happens to
the poor children once the wolves return with them to Thunderclap, but
following each cyclical abduction, the Calla’s progeny is returned to
the village some weeks later. What comes back to each parent though, is
but a shadow of what was taken. The returnees are, in the vernacular, roont – gawking, dibbling
idiots who grow fast and die young. That parents and siblings have to
watch this horrendous decline over the ensuing years has made the Calla
a fractured and grief stricken place. And as we enter the story this
terrifying cycle is reaching a head once more and the Wolves are due
again soon. The townsfolk (many of whom lost siblings of their own in
the last assault by the Wolves), wearied by this generational assault
are gathering up their courage to do something about it. Naturally there
are dissenting voices, coming mainly from those singleton parents or
those with no children at all. Word has it that there are Gunslingers
approaching, and so a committee is sent forth to ask for their aid.

Behind this main plot lies the matter of
Father Callahan. King’s readers will recognize this character from Salem’s Lot and Callahan’s
experiences from that earlier novel are deftly woven into the fabric of
The Wolves of the Calla,
thus making for an intriguing conjunction with the authors earlier work
and one that King, in bringing
himself into the mix as well (and you’ll see how on reading
the novel,) has some degree of fun with. And there is fun in this novel - it’s
almost as if King is playfully rewarding those reader’s who have stuck
with him thus far on this epic journey. This playfulness augments the
weirder aspects to the tale which concern the over-riding story arcs,
particularly the matter of just how our world fits into, overlaps and
effects Roland’s own. Much, as should be in book five of seven, is left
unresolved. At first I wasn’t sure that this linking of worlds served
the story in any way. It seemed to be a distracting plot thread that
took the reader away from the principle business we are concerned with –
i.e. the Wolves. Boy was I wrong! It is part of King’s genius that he
draws these strands together so successfully. Callahan has stepped from
our world into Roland’s and the bridge over which he made the journey is
a key element to what occurs in The
Wolves of the Calla and there is every implication that its
importance will continue into the next book.

On the actual plot to book five, I needn’t
elaborate. If you’ve read as far a book four, you’ll pick up book five
no matter what any critic has to say about it. I can say though, that I
found this latest episode perhaps the most coherent and exciting of the
series so far. The first book, as is widely agreed, is largely
incomprehensible – I certainly found it so. I always got the impression
that King was writing jazz style in that book – seeing where the riff
went – and indeed in the original introduction I remember him stating
that he has little time for outlining his work. I bet he’s changed his
tune these thirty years later – the revisions he’s made for these 2003
editions would indicate as much. Books two and three are where this work
really starts to motor, the obvious major factor being the introduction
(or drawing) of Roland’s
companions. Prior to this, Roland was nothing if not ambiguous as a
protagonist. This band, this ka-tet,
with its rich variety of personalities is easily as vibrant and
interesting as Tolkien’s fellowship and in The Wolves of the Calla it is
their unity under such tremendous pressure and in grave danger that
drives the story forward with such gusto. It is worth noting that Wizards and Glass, the fourth
title of the series and one that dealt mainly with flashback and back
story, left Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy out for much of the time – the
result was a slow and sluggish work which may even have put some readers
off. The Wolves of the Calla
is a far better novel and it builds towards a tremendously exciting
climax that will surely reward you for your efforts.

I think if any new writer came to a
publisher with an outline for The Dark Tower
he or she might well be laughed out of the office. Taken at face value,
so much of this story seems inelegant – “Well, our heroes get to travel
on a mad talking train and they have riddle competition with it. Oh and
there’s this schizophrenic legless black woman who is part of the group
and there are references to the Wizard of Oz and to the Wild West”… and
so on. When examined at such a level, The Dark Tower seems an
eccentric, cumbersome and rather unwieldy construction. And yet there is
much about it that is pure genius, not least that it has the feel of
being an entirely original creation with a chief protagonist who is
utterly compelling. King avoids the temptation to adapt or adopt
standard fantasy conventions (with the exception of an Arthurian
influence only very loosely alluded to) – no Celtic or Norse mythology
here, no the reliance on European medievalism so prevalent in the genre.
Instead we have a purely American concoction (albeit one which King
acknowledges the influence of Sergio Leone) and I can think of nothing
in the genre of modern written fantasy that I have read that seems even
remotely similar. Likewise in this author’s capable hands, the dialects
of Mid-World are entirely believable, giving these characters a voice
cut through with an undeniable and universal reality. Nowhere else have
I seen the use of the vernacular was so brilliantly depicted.

There was some controversy recently when
King was awarded the coveted Medal for Distinguished Contribution to
American Letters by the US’s National Book Foundation. That there were
voices of dissent over this award seems churlish to me. Few writers have
contributed more to American letters than this man. Is his work literature? Who is truly
qualified to say? We think of Dickens’ work as literature, when he, like
King was a chronicler of his age. I wonder if the same aging process
that turns grape juice into wine turns populist fiction into literature?
Perhaps it is the fact that King’s work strays more in genre territory
that provokes this snobbery – do those same dissenting voices then
consider A Christmas Carol
nothing more than populist trash? Literary or not, what cannot be denied
by these lit-snobs is King’s all round importance to American
literature, hell, to world
literature. I say give the man a Nobel prize!

The Wolves of the Calla
is published as an impressive hardcover here in the UK, complete with a
hard wood spine board and colour plates. Though nicely produced, I
confess to being a little disappointed with Bernie Wrightson’s artwork,
which to my eye just looks like the pedestrian paintings of a student
art project – though admittedly, I’m no art critic. There are some
unforgivable inclusions in the paintings though – not least that Oy the
bumbler looks like one of Her Majesty’s overfed corgis and that Roland
is shown with a full set of fingers on both hands – this last is a
whopping huge error and I’m surprised nobody else spotted it. Thankfully
this book is about the words rather than the pictures, and as such has
fed my hunger for the next installment. Roll on The Song of Susannah.